D&D 4E Mike Mearls on how D&D 4E could have looked

OK on this "I would’ve much preferred the ability to adopt any role within the core 4 by giving players a big choice at level 1, an option that placed an overlay on every power you used or that gave you a new way to use them."
Basically have Source Specific Powers and less class powers. But I think combining that with having BIG differing stances to dynamically switch role might be a better idea so that your hero can adjust role to circumstance. I have to defend this NPC right now vs I have to take down the big bad right now vs I have to do minion cleaning right now, I am inspiring allies in my interesting way, who need it right now.

and the obligatory
Argghhhh on this. " I wanted classes to have different power acquisition schedules"

And thematic differences seemed to have been carried fine.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

Sure it wasn't ignored in the design I am saying it was not problematic in play AND milestones were actually to allow people to have longer days if they wanted so basically those and encounter powers allowed how many encounters in a day could be more driven by the narrative and not as much by the daily resource anyway that is how I see it. It allowed you to have spikes in ability.

I get what they were trying to do, but I really disliked how blatantly and unabashedly game mechanical the milestone was. That was my feeling with a lot of 4E, though.

Ah to a degree off turn actions seem a reminder that the game is in narrative sense a bunch of people all acting at once.

Yes, to a degree they do and 5E still has a reaction, but it's much more limited. You only have one reaction for one AOO, dodge, Shield spell, Counterspell, etc. 4E wasn't nearly as limited in that respect. In a campaign I played in, one of the PCs was a bard named Kortuss. His nickname was, of course, "Kortuss Interuptus". The power of being able to move an ally a square was often worthless, too, so half the time he'd be asking if someone wanted to be moved and the character wouldn't want to be moved.

My personal games have averaged 2 or 3 players a lot less confusion less people waiting and so on and so forth.

I also agree that in a smaller group this was good. I generally prefer a smaller group and D&D often runs into the problem that its strident niche protection means that you often have a party that can't do things it needs to. But that's a different issue.

 

[Garthanos]

Absolutely. it's a balance between writing so much down you tie the hands of the DM and the players ("I want to do XYX... well, there's a feat/power/class feature/practice for that... sorry")

I think for some things of that sort can be avoided if written carefully. In effect the ability is not can I do it or not it becomes a reduced price to do it and higher reliability to do it. This works well for rituals and practices at least.

 

[Garthanos]

I also agree that in a smaller group this was good. I generally prefer a smaller group and D&D often runs into the problem that its strident niche protection means that you often have a party that can't do things it needs to. But that's a different issue.

Yes true, now niches rewarding teamwork is nice and can be very very fun but smaller parties need both broader capabilities like more skills trained or much narrower stories (which are not always the desire).

 

[Garthanos]

I get what they were trying to do, but I really disliked how blatantly and unabashedly game mechanical the milestone was. That was my feeling with a lot of 4E, though.

Think of it as a circadian rhythm thing

 

[Garthanos]

Or getting in the groove...

Actually that reminds me of the 13A thing of the die which counts through the turns as the battle heats up.

 

[Hussar]

No, my assumption is that sounds like a cool idea how can we narratively tie that into the story.

Then the immediate push back from you that I get is that "you dont want to faff about" actually doing it. In contrast the feedback from Garthanos is that it would be perfect.



So what is it? Do you want to do Epic stuff or do you just want to say that you do Epic stuff.



If the DM did not want to change their adventure then they should have thought through the consequences of killing off a PC. It sounds like it would have to be a real railroad for the DM to keep trying to push through after a character death.

Ok, it looks like later on, you got the point. Raise Dead has been (more or less) trivial forever. Or, to put it another way, are you saying that caster characters can never be heroic? Or that they can only be heroic when they aren't casting spells?

 

[Hussar]

Just thinking about this point a little.

Can you force the DM into doing anything? Maybe. Your Magic User gets the spell Fireball and then, by coincidence, all of a sudden no two enemies are ever positioned close enough together to hit more then 2 or 3 at a time. Wotc releases a book that has Gnomes and Monks and then, by coincidence, all of a sudden all the Gnomes and Monks get eaten by the DM Grudge Monster.

Frankly it would be easier to just get a good DM then trying to rules lawyer a bad DM into throwing some crumbs.

No. This has absolutely nothing to do with good/bad DM. It's that caster classes get to tell the DM, "Ok, this fantastic thing is happening right now" and the good DM says, "Yup. That's what happens". But, if a non-caster tries to do EXACTLY the same thing, suddenly it's a multi-session quest involving planar travel (which the fighter can't actually DO). I don't care how good of a DM you are. This is just not going to happen.

Has nothing to do with bad DMing or railroading or anything else. It's just not going to happen. Imagine that conversation at the table. The fighter players says, "Ok, Bob's character just died, so, I'm going to travel to the underworld and get him back."

Yeah, that's going to fly at any table. There isn't a chance in hell that any DM is going to let that go.

 

[pemerton]

I keep saying that this is a problem with 3e/4e/PF and you keep focusing on 4e, trying to turn this into a “vs 4e Edition war”. But this isn’t 2008 and I have zero interest in that kind of discussion...

I don't have any views about 3E. I've played only a very small amount of it, and as a design I think it has a number of well-known problems.

The most interesting thing to be about 3E is that if you apply a level-bonus to AC but call it "natural armour" then many RPGers will regard that as a simulation even though it is just a label with no meaning in the fiction whatsoever (ie the best possible magic armour is +5 plate for around +14 AC, while there are natural armour bonuses in the 30s - what is "natural armour" that is so much better than what the best smith can possibly forge?). Mutatis mutandis for many other aspects of 3E.

I agree with [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] (from past threads, not this one) that PC build in 4e owes quite a bit to 3E. But encounter build/design and action resolution in 4e is wildly different from 3E - very much to the benefit of 4e!

 

[pemerton]

Since they've been mentioned, here are the "1x/day when you die" abilities in my 30th level 4e party:

Paladin - Return to the Living: If you drop to zero hp and doesn't die, regain 1 hp and spend up to 4 healing surges

and also Defender of Life and Death: When you drop to zero hp or fewer, a pale raven guides your soul back to your body: regain hp equal to your bloodied value, stand up as a free action, and us an at-will attack power as a free action

Sage of Ages - Reverse Time: If if an attack kills you or drops you to 0 or fewer hp, instead of dying regain max hp and move to directly after the attacker in the initiative order.

Demigod ranger/cleric - Divine Recovery: The first time each day that you are reduced to zero or fewer hp, regains hp equal to half your maximum

Chaos sorcerer - Primordial Rebirth: When you start your turn at 0 hp or lower, you regain HP equal to your bloodied value, and each ally within 5 squares can also spend a surge

Fighter - Ring of Pelor: When you die or are dying, your body burns away to ash; on the start of your next turn you appear in a burst of flame within 5 sq of your last location with a number of hp equal to your healing surge value (if you've reached at least one milestone the burst of flame also attacks all targets in a close burst 2 - mechanical details elided).​

The most powerful, and probably most interesting, there is the sage of ages - who can foresee the death blow and travel back in time to avoid it and retaliate against the (would-be) attacker. The demigod and sorcerer are straightforward "resurgence" abilities - the character doesn't die at all but powers up by drawing on divine/primordial essence. Pelor's ring gives the fighter phoenix-powers. And the paladin has two of these capabilities, one that draws on inner power to stand up again (more resurgence), the other of which relies on the guidance of his patron (the Raven Queen). I don't think I've seen that last one in play yet.

 

[Lanefan]

Has nothing to do with bad DMing or railroading or anything else. It's just not going to happen. Imagine that conversation at the table. The fighter players says, "Ok, Bob's character just died, so, I'm going to travel to the underworld and get him back."

Yeah, that's going to fly at any table. There isn't a chance in hell that any DM is going to let that go.

Don't be so quick to judge, sir.

In a previous campaign of mine something similar actually happened: a PC died and couldn't be revived by conventional means, so another character - a non-caster! - decided she was going to find a way to get into Niflheim and somehow retrieve the soul from Hel. She did her research and found a means of getting there - a long journey on this world followed by a walk through a very dangerous tunnel to a planar gate through which you had to in some combination fight and bribe your way through, then very likely another long journey once in Niflheim.

She rounded up a party and off they went. In theory a party entirely made up of non-casters could have done this adventure, though they'd have found serious trouble at the tunnel to the gate as it was crawling with undead; but the party was a mixed group of casters and non. All went fairly well until they reached Hel's hall, whereupon Hel challenged them: your champion against mine in a death match. You win, you get your guy back. You lose, your souls are mine. Any of you who don't wish to be part of this bargain can leave right now, take your chances outside, and will not face the usual defenses if and when you find a way to leave this plane.

Two PCs left, and eventually found their way off-plane and back to the prime material (though on the wrong world, and stuck there).

The rest took on the challenge, and selected a champion from among themselves. I-as-DM set the odds somewhat in the party champion's favour (at best guess he'd win about 65-75% of the time - Hel's champion had a slightly worse AC, fewer h.p., and might have been a level lower, I forget now), and the remaining party loaded their guy up with all their best magic to further tilt the field.

And even with all that, the PC lost. End of party. Happy Hel.